Canvey Island: The Labworth restaurant and beach bistro

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 8 Mar 2011

The Labworth is a Grade II Listed Building designed by the Anglo-Danish structural engineer Ove Arup whilst he was working for the practice of Christiani and Nielsen. The English Heritage Listed Buildings website describes it thus:- "Cafe with integral shelters. Built by Ove Arup, Christiani and Nielsen 1932-33. Functional International Moderne style. Built of reinforced concrete with flat roof. Circular drum of cafe on first floor level supported on piles (now concealed by rise in land level) with two arms extending from this enclosing shelters with steel piers on the seaward side. Hardwood windows extend the full diameter of the circle with some top opening lights. Entrance by doorcase in splayed bay facing sea supported on 4 metal columns. Staircase to cafe which has circular columns supporting ring beam and original shallow cone-shaped light fittings. Doors lead on to roofs of shelters which originally had thin steel columns supporting canopies. A pioneering building of the Modern Movement which predates the Gorilla House at London Zoo by Lubetkin and Tecton's Penguin House, and one of the only architectural designs by Ove Arup." The sea defence wall, visible on either side here, runs around the back and landward side of the building. The building was bought and refurbished by Chris Topping in 1998 and is now run as a restaurant and beach bistro. Its website, complete with menus, is here http://www.thelabworth.com/index.html Labworth was the name of an isolated farmstead that existed until about the 1930s on the west side of Furtherwick Road, just south-west of its junction with Meynell Avenue, and about 400 metres north of the restaurant. A small parade of shops, including a Londis store, occupy the site now. Labworth Road runs parallel to Meynell Avenue but two roads away to the north.

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